Google Secures Victory in EU Battle Over $1.7 Billion AdSense Fine

Google has just emerged victorious in its legal battle against a $1.7 billion fine imposed by the European Union. This started when the European Commission accused Google of exploiting its market dominance through Google’s AdSense business in its 2019 ruling.  

According to the Commission, Google restricts websites from using ad brokers other than its AdSense service for search ads.

Google Welcomes Courts Decision On Its AdSense Business

The EU court stated that the European Commission failed to fully consider all relevant factors regarding the duration of the abusive contract clauses. 

The court, however, upheld most of the Commission’s findings.

“By today’s judgment, the General Court, after having upheld the majority of the Commission’s findings, concludes that the institution committed errors in its assessment of the duration of the clauses at issue, as well as of the market covered by them in 2016,” the court said in a statement.

Google welcomed the court’s decision. The company pointed out that the case involved a narrow subset of text-only search ads and that they had already made changes to their contracts in 2016, even before the Commission’s original ruling.

“We made changes to our contracts in 2016 to remove the relevant provisions, even before the Commission’s decision. We are pleased that the court has recognized errors in the original decision and annulled the fine,” the company said in an email.

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Google Loss In Court Cases 

The significant ruling comes from two major victories for the EU against tech giants.

One against Google in a separate case and another against Apple regarding tax deals with Ireland.

Note that the AdSense fine, one of a trio of fines that have cost Google a total of 8.25 billion euros, was triggered by a complaint from Microsoft in 2010.

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